For years I have been fascinated with the disparity of the spatial intelligence/orientation between individuals and even more amazed by the spatial intelligence of animals such as cats and pigeons that seem to have an in-built GPS to find their way from place to place with uncanny, and unfathomable skills. In a Spatialworlds posting last year I discussed the parts of the brain that have been identified as our spatial control room with GPS capacity.My thinking on this was particular prodded by my experience with my son when he was younger. I could walk around large cities all day that he had never been to before and then say lets go back to the hotel - and he would negotiate the streets of places like Hong Kong, without a map and take me back to the hotel, whilst I was hopelessly lost and searching for a map to orientate myself. Maybe that is why I became a geographer, because my spatial control centre was so bad that I had to learn to use maps to orientate myself. After this happened time and time again, I realised that my son had a much better spatial orientation than me, despite his limited knowledge and experience - was it just an innate ability? The following posting explores several examples of the extraordinary spatial orientation skills of some people and animals and suggest some reasons why.The pigeon's spatial ability

Pigeons have extraordinary navigational abilities. Take a pigeon
from its loft and let it go somewhere it has never been before and it
will, after circling in the sky for while, head home. This remarkable capacity extends to places tens even hundreds of kilometres from its
home and is all the more remarkable to humans because we are apparently
incapable of it ourselves. Humans have long made use of the pigeon’s homing ability, principally
for carrying messages in the past - especially in war.

Out of direct contact with home, and out of the landscape to which
birds have become familiar, there must nonetheless be large-scale cues
available to the navigating bird with which it can estimate its position
relative to home. Many theories have been forwarded to explain the navigational ability of pigeons, from reading the sun’s arc to the detection of long-distance infra-sounds. Both unfounded in science!

Another theory is that pigeons can use
the predictable gradients of intensity and dip-angle in the earth’s magnetic field
to map their position relative to known values at home. Again scientifically unsubstantiated.It is true that many birds do
have a magnetic compass which gives them a sense of direction when they
cannot see the sun. A compass helps make long-distance movement
efficient and is central to migration, but it cannot help them navigate
if they do not know the direction of the goal. This requires a map. It seems this map turns out almost certainly to be
olfactory – pigeons, and perhaps all birds, navigate using smell.Pigeons deprived of the ability to smell cannot navigate. Scientist have fooled them
with air from the wrong site and they fly in the wrong direction. However there are still experts who doubt it on reasonable grounds.

Another theory relates to the sense of smell. The case is pretty strong that birds learn the rough composition of atmospheric volatiles
characteristic of their home area. Considering that this varies with winds that
come from different directions, they are able to extrapolate to
unfamiliar places if they are blown off-course or taken there by a human
and released. Even over the open oceans, birds may use odours to navigate.It seems that olfactory deprivation has little effect on a
pigeon’s orientation, and it seems that they switch to a secondmechanism dominated by visual landscape cues.

Recently, through access to miniature on-board tracking
technologies such as GPS, birds can be followed with
precision to unravel the mechanisms of their spatial cognition in the
wild.Spatial tracking has shown that pigeons repeatedly released from the same site
soon learn a habitual route home which they stick to faithfully even if
it is not the quickest. Routes
often follow linear landscape features, such as roads or field margins,
but are learnt most effectively over landscapes of intermediate
complexity. So if the pigeon’s brain contains a network of learnt routes, how are
these memories acquired and how do they interact? Recently, Andrea Flack and Dora Biro showed
that having to learn three routes in parallel doesn’t cause pigeons any
additional confusion. Route-learning is memorised independently,
regardless of whether the sites they are released from are encountered
sequentially, randomly intermingled or in strict rotation.

Other ideas to explain the power of animal navigation over unknown landscapes

It seems that there are places around the world that seem to confuse
birds — areas where they repeatedly vanish in the wrong direction or
scatter on random headings rather than fly straight home. Geophysicist Jon Hagstrum proposes an intriguing theory for homing pigeon disorientation—that the
birds are following ultralow frequency sounds back towards their lofts
and that disruptions in their ability to "hear" home is what screws them
up. Called infrasound,
these sound waves propagate at frequencies well below the range audible
to people, but pigeons can pick them up.

"They're using sound to image the terrain [surrounding] their loft,"
he said. "It's like us visually recognizing our house using our eyes."

The pigeon in warThe
story of a WWII hero whose feats of navigation saved hundreds of lives.
The hero? A pigeon named G.I. Joe.Homing
pigeons can find their way home from more than 500 kilometres away and at
speeds of 100 Kilometres per hour, said Mindy Rosewitz, curator at the U.S.
Army Communications Electronics Museum in Fort Monmouth, N.J.

Cerveny found that when red foxes pounce, they mostly jump in a
north-easterly direction. He thinks that they’re using the Earth’s
magnetic field to hunt. Červený spent over two years studying wild red foxes in the Czech
Republic, with the help of a 23-strong team of wildlife biologists and
experienced hunters. The team recorded almost 600 mousing jumps,
performed by 84 foxes at a wide variety of locations and times. They found that foxes strongly prefer to jump in a north-easterly
direction, around 20 degrees off from magnetic north. This fixed heading
was important for their success as hunters. They were more likely to
make a kill if they jumped along their preferred axis, particularly if
their prey was hidden by high cover or snow. If they pounced to the
north-east, they killed on 73% of their attacks; if they jumped in the
opposite direction, they success rate stayed at 60%. In all other
directions, only 18% of their pounces were successful. Could the foxes be taking their direction
from the environment? Červený thinks not. He found that the animals
leapt in the same direction regardless of the time of day, season of
year, cloud cover, or wind direction. Červený thinks that the only
remaining explanation is that foxes align their pounces to the Earth’s
magnetic field.Many living things can sense magnetic fields. In his New Scientist article Cerveny concluded that other animals have a magnetic sense too, such as
sharks and rays, turtles, ants, lobsters, beetles, bats and mole rats.The list also includes cow and deer. In 2008, he found that herds of cow and deer also tend to align in a north-south line
like living compass needles. Spying on the animals with Google Earth
satellites, it was found that that they tend to face magnetic north
regardless of wind strength, time of day, or the position of the sun. A
year later, they found more evidence that these animals are influenced
by a magnetic sense: their neat lines could be disrupted by high-voltage power lines, which produce strong magnetic fields. The nearer the herds get to the lines, the more chaotic their positions.In all of these cases – be they cows of birds – it’s not entirely clear what the point of
having a magnetic sense is. For example, it’s reasonable to think that
magnetic compasses and maps could help migrating animals to find their
way, especially when visibility is poor or landmarks aren’t obvious.
That makes sense, but there’s little hard data to back it up.
Červený’s study is one of the first to demonstrate a clear benefit – red
foxes hunt more successfully if they jump in the right direction.So how do foxes and other animals log into the magnetic fields of the earth?Scientists suggest that animals sense magnetic fields using one
of two basic methods. The first involves clustered crystals of
magnetite, an iron mineral that line up according to magnetic fields.
Depending on their direction, the crystals either repel or attract one
another, creating tiny forces that could be picked up by proteins. The
moving crystals could even open or close molecular gates on the surface
of nerve cells. Either way, the crystals convert a magnetic field into a
nervous signal.The second method is used by birds and involves a molecule called
cryptochrome, which is found in the retina. When light strikes
cryptochrome, it shunts an electron over to a partner molecule called
FAD. The result is a pair of ‘radicals’ – molecules with a solo
electron. These unpaired electrons have a property called “spin” and
they can either spin together, or in opposite directions. The two states
can flip from one to another, and they lead to different chemical
outcomes. This is where the Earth’s magnetic field comes in: it acts
like a switch that influences the flips. In doing so, it can affect the
outcome of the radical pair’s chemical reactions.All of this happens in the eyes of common birds, such as robins or
warblers. This is why you can deactivate a robin’s internal compass by
blindfolding it. In fact, you could make it lose its bearings by blindfolding just its right eye, or covering it with a frosted goggle. Some scientists have suggested that robins and other birds can literally see magnetic
fields, as a sort of heads-up display. The fields could appear as light
or dark patches (or even colours) that lay on top of what the bird
normally sees.Overall, after reading all this research and trying to piece together a coherent summary of the causes of the amazing spatial orientation of animals, I am more confused than ever!!

Lera Boroditsky once did a simple experiment: She asked people to
close their eyes and point southeast. A room of distinguished professors
in the U.S. pointed in almost every possible direction, whereas
5-year-old Australian aboriginal girls always got it right. She says the difference lies in language.
Boroditsky, an associate professor of cognitive science at the
University of California, San Diego, says the Australian aboriginal
language doesn't use words like left or right. It uses compass points,
so they say things like "that girl to the east of you is my sister."

This post contains links to a lot of pictures, but extraordinary and amazing pictures showing the diversity of the places of the Earth - the beautiful, unusual, weird, strange, dramatic, unbelievable and extraordinary places that make up our world.

Sometimes we just have to stop and take in the wow of the places of the world and marvel at the wonders of the world. Enjoy the following galleries of places with a difference and/or a significant wow factor beyond the normal suburban world many of us live in.

Following on from recent posting about data visualisation, it is worth having a look at the Statsilk site. The site offers a download of the StatPlanet software, a free application for creating fully customisable interactive maps.
StatPlanet can be used to visualize location-based statistical data,
such as life expectancy by country or demographic statistics and voting
patterns by US state. In addition to maps, StatPlanet also has the
option of including interactive graphs and charts to create feature-rich
interactive infographics. StatPlanet can be downloaded as a desktop application and used as free educational software. The free download comes with up-to-date world statistics in a wide range of categories and includes a
world map (country level) and a US map (state level) - with a
limit of 5 indicators.

manning@chariot.net.auMaking data live!A previous Spatialworlds posting highlighted the importance and potential of visualisations to student learning - the importance of visualisations to provide proportional spatial information on a topic to help expose the truth, develop perspective and inform. That posting also proposed the idea that data tables in books are where data goes to die and that the potential of visualisations in the form of infographics is a powerful learning and engagement tool for students. With these thoughts still going around in my head, I was excited to find a great website called Information is beautiful. The site is full of some great infographics, discussions, inter-actives and ideas about how to creatively represent data. The site and the available book, also called Information is beautiful contains some amazing infographics which certainly blow apart some commonly held myths, provide copious information and some great 'out of left field' perspectives on a wide range of topics/issues - all that could be made relevant to the geography classroom.The work is the brainchild of David
McCandless, a London-based author, writer and designer. David has a passion for visualizing information – facts, data, ideas, subjects,
issues, statistics, questions – all with the minimum of words. In particular he is interested in how designed information can help us understand the world, cut though mis-truths (BS he calls it) and reveal hidden connections, patterns and backstories - all very geographical! Interestingly he says his pet-hate is the representation of data as pie charts - hence expect to see data represented in all shapes and sizes - but not pie charts.

To give a taste of what David's work offers the geography/history/social science/humanities teacher, I have picked out just a few that I found fascinating. Have a play with the following infographics, the first two are interactive and certainly makes one think and challenges some assumptions and thought truths! - others just provide some really useful and easily digestible information.

The term currency if being used more and more in general language to
mean more than just about money and the circulation of money. The term has a
currency to refer to something which is up-to-date, current and even
prevalent.Other analogous terms are nowness,
presentness, contemporaneity, contemporaneous, modernity, modernness – all referring to something
being in the here and now. As discussed
in a previous posting, the spontaneity of geography is one of the many attractions
of our subject – spontaneity is based on the ability of geography teachers to
log into real time events and phenomena happening around the world. The currency
term is extremely applicable to geography, a subject that in the first instance
is about what is happening in the world now, with an eye on the determinism of the
past and the possibilities for the future. In spatial terms we can talk about the
currency of a map or chart as determined by the best available information at a
given time. In geography we study current events/activities/happenings
of an incredibly diverse nature across the globe and ask the geographical questions
to determine causation, impact and futures.

In this
posting I thought it would be interesting to showcase the currency of several disturbing
events/phenomena and provide some data and representations that could be used
in the geography classroom – they are the flood of migrants/displaced persons
into Europe and the spread of ISIS attacks.

As has been frequently reported in the media over the past 12 months, vast
numbers of migrants are making their way across the Mediterranean to Europe, sparking a crisis as countries struggle to cope with the influx. These stresses are creating division in the European Union about how best to deal with resettling people and what is the responsibility and capacity of European countries to respond.

BBC News Online has produced a plethora of graphs and maps to unravels the myths that have grown up about asylum seekers flooding
into Europe.To do the unraveling will require considerable data and map analysis and plenty of good geographical thinking.More than
500,000 migrants are estimated to have arrived in Europe by sea in 2015, but
exact numbers are unclear as some may have passed through borders undetected - not to mention the tragic loss of life at sea by desperate people trying to get to Europe.

One way
to measure where migrants have ended up is through asylum applications.
Although not all of those arriving claim asylum, over half a million have done
so, according to the EU statistics agency, Eurostat.

The map below shows that Germany continues to be the most popular destination for migrants in Europe. It has received the highest number of new asylum applications, with almost 222,000 by the end of August 2015.

Mapping ISISThe prevalence of articles in the media on the Islamic State (ISIS) is another issue of currecny that confuses and in many cases disturbs students. Again, it can be studied through geographcial representation to try to make sense of what is happening and hopefully provide some thinking on futures - beyond the macabre and doomsday.

The map below shows that at least a dozen countries have had attacks since the Islamic State, or
ISIS, began to pursue a global strategy in the summer of 2014. I am sure this map could be added to for 2015 and as we all know, ISIS has a global strategy of terror.

In fact, the 2015 animation below provides data that can be added to the map in real time.

Where are you?

Spatial visits

Pageviews last 7 days

Translate

Who am I?

I have taught history, geography and civics and citizenship in the South Australian education system since 1976. I have been actively involved in the promotion of geography and history over the years, in particular the use of spatial technology in schools. I am a Past Chair of the Australian Geography Teachers' Association (Chair 2008-13) and Immediate Past President of the Australian Alliance of Associations in Education (2013-present). During the development of the Australian Curriculum: Geography I was a member of the ACARA Advisory Panel (2009-2013) and Executive Director of the ESA GeogSpace project. From 2007-2011 and in 2015 I was the Manager for the Humanities and Social Sciences (HaSS) in the South Australian Department for Education and Child Development (DECD). Presently I am a Teaching Academic in HaSS Education at the University of South Australia and the Manager for the Premier's ANZAC Spirit School Prize in DECD.